Himani Sanagaram–
Indian American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi from the Democratic Party from Illinois’ 8th Congressional District says he is cautiously optimistic that the TikTok bill will pass. “We have to wait and see how it plays out,” said in an interview with indica.
Recently, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell raised the issue about getting TikTok passed. Some younger Democrats might not like this because they are relying on young voters. The Senate has yet to take up the bill. However, according to Krishnamoorthi, nearly half of participants in the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey favor a ban on TikTok or that it be forced to be sold to a non-Chinese company.
The bipartisan bill, approved in a 352-65 House vote in mid-March, seeks to ban TikTok nationwide if the video-sharing app continues to be controlled by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Krishnamoorthi and Mike Gallagher (R-WI) of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, wrote to TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi to separate itself from the CCP-controlled ByteDance. The House bill gives Chew six months to divest TikTok from ByteDance or face a ban.
About 40 per cent of Democrats and 60 per cent of Republicans support a ban or a sale of TikTok, the March 2024 CNBC survey of 1001 Americans found. The poll also found that younger Americans in particular aren’t in favor of disallowing TikTok. While 31 per cent of participants in the CNBC poll oppose a ban, the number rises to 48 per cent among the 18-34 age group. Just 11 per cnt are against blocking the app in the 65 and older category. Of the daily TikTok survey users, close to two-thirds think the government should not prohibit the social media app.
App stores and web hosting companies would be barred from offering the app for new downloads or updating it on users’ phones.
On the perception that ‘Hinduism’ is under threat in the US, Krishnamoorthi said, “Many minorities in America are facing discrimination and right now Hindu Americans are seeing that discrimination.”
He said Indo-U.S. relations are strong. “Under Joe Biden, Indo-U.S. foreign relations, continue to be strong and will continue to be stronger,” he added.
Krishnamoorthi said he is working toward the per country cap for H-1B visas and enhance the skills needed to do so. “Elimination of percentage caps helps H-1Bs to reduce the waiting time for green cards. Currently, on an average, each Indian family will have to wait for about 100 years to get their green card.”
As per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, 59,100 Indians became US citizens in 2023. According to the report, Indians ranked second (6.7 per cent) in terms of the largest group by country of birth to be naturalized in the United States in 2023, while Mexico held the top position with 12.7 percent naturalizations.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, (Fairus.org), the per-country caps limit a single country to an annual cap of seven percent of family-based immigrant visas and seven percent of employment-based immigrant visas. The United States has a 7 per cent cap per country on legal permanent residency visas for immigrants from India, which some consider to be “discrimination” and “inconsistent” with merit-based immigration.
The cap has been in place since the Immigration Act of 1990, and has not been updated to reflect today’s immigration needs.
Meanwhile, on the illegal immigration front, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data (USCBP), an overwhelming number of 96,917 Indians were apprehended while crossing into the United States without documentation between October 2022 and September 2023.
